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Saturday, June 21, 2008

Bons baisers de l'Alsace. FP's puckered up playlist

Happy Fête de la musique everyone! Can't think of a nicer bunch of melomanes I would wish that too... I see an explanation is needed. The (then) French Minister for Culture, Jack Lang (I hear you say - French? Jack? Lang? Mey wee. C'est comme ça!) had the rather fine and dandy idea about 20 years ago of making the longest day of the year - 21st of June - into an official national celebration of all things musical. So today you are literally allowed to stick a piece of paper over your comb, stand on a street corner and make any noise you choose. It's allowed! In practice, of course, any group playing any kind of music (from madrigals to modern jazz) will be out in the streets tonight playing their hearts out. Well known-groups give free concerts (Darce - we had Bertignac here one year) in the larger cities and the place to be is Paris where there are REALLY big concerts. I will not be torturing the Alsacians with my fiddle playing but will venture out into the streets tonight for a cold beer on some street corner in the search of some magical moments. We'll have 30° degrees and no rain so looks like it'll be a good evening...

Moving on to the serious stuff, this week's theme has thrown up some real beauties. I've listened to your lists and was nearly discouraged from doing my own - they're so brilliant. Particularly Ejays. And then I thought, what the hell. In for a penny. Another day another dollar. I love all of these songs. Hope you like them. Bisous. FP.

(OK so I cheated - there's 11. But New Order's Perfect Kiss is one of my favourite favourite ever tracks....)

11 comments:

Love love LOVE Maximo Park, for my money Graffiti is the best indie snigle for years and years and when it came up on my little mp3 player as I walked out of the school gates, having completed my reports (the powers that be deciding that ALL reports need to be done AT THE SAME TIME, tossers...) I actually danced along the road. I have a real weakness for men with accents and Paul is such a limber beast. Sigh...

You can keep Sixpence None The Richer though, they did crappy covers of There She Goes and Don't Dream It's Over and blee, Christian rock...

Now I'm gathering from all of this that I have a rather sweet tooth, musically speaking. I nommed Shanice's 'I love your smile' for the smile category. I genuinely like that song (and think it was donded by Frenchy) but Dorian described it as 'being forced to drink gallons of sugered water at gunpoint'. Now we have "equivalent of eating an elephant made out of sweets and sherbert" which is equally high in glucose content. Perhaps I should watch the saccharine level in my lists in future. Sniff. Future playlist on sugar and sweet things anyone? I actually seem to remember we did that already. Love the Maximö Park too, TK. That's such a fruity accent. I speak a bit like that when "ahm at herm". Not when I'm putting on my posh 'work voice'.

@ fp - yes my memory glands have been in overdrive this weekend. First the weird venue thread on RR, then your mentions of Music Party Day.

My brother used to live in Rouen and we were lucky enough to be over there twice for the 21st June. Biggest act we saw personally was Wilko Johnson - Rouen Market Square ain't exactly Madison Square Garden!. Plastic Bertrand WAS fooling around with some kids playing on a street corner (guitar amps plugged in through the windows of the house), but you couldn't call THAT a gig.

Merci bien Carole! Père de Darce: You tend to get the 'reeeely' big acts in cities like Lyon, Marseilles and of course Paris. Think we might head on up to Paris next year if anyone 'meejah' is on. Still, we had a bonzer night, I have to say. The weather kept fine and beautiful - not even any signs of a summer storm that we often get at the end of the day when the heat builds up past 30°. We started off admiring a local Capoeira (is that right?) club who were throwing themselves through the air with gay abandon. Kids as young as 7. Utterly brilliant. Then past three hard rock youths making an unholy row and growling into a badly ajusted mike. We then observed some scary mohican punks very seriously tuning up. Drummer doing energetic paradiddles just to keep the crowd interested. Sat down and had some dinner to the sounds of an, er, Lenny Kravitz tribute band. But they were GOOD! Very competent anyway. They were replaced onstage by an 80s hell tribute band who then proceeded to mangle the collected works of Roxette and Brian Adams. Back through the narrow streets to the scary punks who were STILL tuning up. Bass player thwanging out some interesting sounding riffs but still no music. I was all for moving on but The Bloke said "No no we're going to hear them play". Half an hour later we were giggling helplessly as they continued to tune up, po-faced and utterly serious. But when they DID get going they were extremely good. Precise, round sound with lots of great punk energy. Moved on to one of the prettiest squares where a DJ was doing his best to Guetta-blast the crowd with some seriously good dance sounds. Back into the centre of town where we suddenly saw a crowd of 'CRS' policemen in their navy blue uniforms with shiny dark helmets. Like a swarm of unwelcome bluebottles. I said to the bloke 'We're outta here'. And we headed on home. A very mixed bag of music this year. But we DID get to hear the scary punks.